Career Change: Imagine doing something else

“You start doing something and close your eyes long enough, you can’t imagine doing anything else.” a bartender explaining why he still works at a bar despite being an alcoholic in The Numbers Station (a forgettable John Cusack film)My friends at General Electric will sometimes talk to me in a way that makes me realize that they […]

Career Change: It rarely is ever “the right time”

“I always thought it was not the right time. When 40 approached, I realized that there will never be the right time.” Melanie, a mid-level manager at a bank in Shoreline, Connecticut said.As Melanie told her tale, I mentally checked off some of the usual reasons:(1) even though she quickly realized it was a mismatched […]

Rainy Monday morning… are you excited to go to work?

“Rainy days of Monday always get me down…” I think this is an old Carpenter’s song.  I used to feel anxiety on Mondays and other random days because I had to go to work.  Now… as strange as this sounds… I am often excited to get to work, on any particular day, because I get […]

Career Happiness: Can you be yourself?

Zappos is the online retailer that has disrupted the way that most companies empower their employees. It gives two guidelines to its customer service personnel: 1. Be yourself2. Use your judgment Can you be yourself at your job?  If not, your lack of authenticity will begin to wear on you. I have several good friends […]

The connection between unhappy work and psychological issues

Career Counseling Connecticut is designed to help our career counseling clients with the very practical need of finding better work.  Getting our clients onto a different career track requires a deep knowledge of the work world; an ability to guide our clients correctly on the proper path towards better suited careers; and a thoroughly practical […]

Happy Work Leads to Successful Work

In providing career counseling for a decade to our Career Counseling Connecticut’s clientele, I have observed the reciprocal causation between happiness and success.  Our cultural model provides the following: Be successful first and then happiness will come next.  Success causes happiness. True but only to a degree.  I have provided career counseling to numerous “successful” […]

The Strange Education Paradox: Enormous work to help young adults get into college (4 years). Minimal work to help young adults after college (40-50 years).

My initial work in the education space was the creation of The Learning Consultants, Connecticut’s largest private education consulting firm.  I left practicing law because I had a genuine calling for educating and counseling others to reach their potential. It was my mission. I wish I could claim entrepreneurial foresight in predicting that my work […]

Happy work post 65 – not retirement – should be the new goal

I am so delighted that science has backed up what common sense has dictated. Aging well stems from (1) happy work (2) diet and (3) exercise.  And, many would claim in that order. Every bit of evidence that I’ve studied on the subject indicates how foolish our society has been to make 65 a mandatory […]

Your career represents who you are

“My life is my message.” Mahatma Gandhi. About 16 years ago, I met Ruma through a friend of a friend.  She was a young, striving, go-getter who wanted to get into the education space.  On her drives from Boston to New York, she would stop in Connecticut periodically to meet with me since I was […]

Good work as the best medicine for depression

“That’s a recipe for depression.” My wife noted when I told her about one of my friends who has been “fortunate” enough to not have to work for the last few years.  He’s in the entertainment industry. He had a few big movie and television projects that generated significant income.  He’s single and he’s really […]